


the luxury of violence

by 1001cranes



Category: Everworld Series - K. A. Applegate
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2011-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-22 02:22:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1001cranes/pseuds/1001cranes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki carved a piece of Everworld for himself, all those years ago, and like all things one makes to suit oneself, it fits ill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the luxury of violence

"This is where we should attack," David murmurs, drawing one finger along the trench before the mountains outside Loki’s lands. "Make a stand before the ridge. Then fall back here if needed." They’ll need to. Gods help him, but they’ll need to.

Loki stands behind David and shakes his head. "Impossible. It's the rainy season. They’d be knee-deep in mud.”

"Still?"

"I’d say two more months, at least," Loki says quietly. “Hera’s lands. She inherited them from Zeus, along with his dominion over rain. She’s… half-wild.”

“Christ.” No one can catch a break, these days.

“Indeed.” Loki shrugs. “Hephaestus ‘ death nearly killed her. Heartbreak does such a thing, among the Greeks.”

David rubs one thumb along the previously drawn battle line. “I thought they hated each other.”

“They challenged each other. And she came to understand there are worse things in a child than ugliness.” Loki sketches a thin line from the river to the foot of the forest. “Here. Rain notwithstanding, the Hetwan dislike water. Our disadvantage is twice theirs.”

At this angle David can tell that Loki’s nose is longer today. The set of his jaw is crueler. Almost sharp.

“I’ll get these to Jalil,” he murmurs, and runs one finger just over the ends of Loki's hair. “Athena’s been chomping at the bit.”

“At least he always loved her,” Loki finishes, distracted, and it takes David a moment to realize he was talking about Hephaestus.

| |

Loki is not as strong as he lets David imagine. He is a god, certainly, but a trickster god, a god of lies and falsehoods and shape-shifting. He is not Tyr, or Odin. He is not even Athena, loath as he is to admit it. He is clever, he is sly -- one even might say smart -- but he is by no means *strong*. There was a reason Loki tried to snatch the witch, tried to escape this sinking ship of a world. He is a rat, not a lion. He was born under the threat of Ragnarok, he grew old under the rise of the One God. His endgame was *always* to run. Yet now he fights at David's side - at *Athena's* side. He makes allies he would as soon send to Tartarus as look at. And all for this patchwork, piecemeal world, this mythical and gluttanous plane.

He carved a piece of it for himself, all those years ago, and like all things one makes to suit oneself, it fits ill. He misrepresents himself. He overcompensates for his weaknesses and overestimates his strengths and Everworld has grown up around them. He is Everworld, and Everworld is Him, too. His mistakes are part of this world’s foundation, and he feels the cracks therein as if they were of his very soul. It makes him fear for his mind. It’s not unusual for immortals to go mad, to rage and destroy and rape and pillage beyond all ordinary measure. And there is nothing Loki fears more than that growing darkness, to fall someplace outside of Niflheim, where his children cannot reach him. Where he could no longer exist. And though he lends no words to it, he fears for David’s life as well. For those touched by immortals’ lives, it’s not out of the ordinary to waste away – to become an echo, a voice; to diminish to a breeze, or nothing at all.

David has cast away the witch. Everworld has claimed him – Loki has claimed him – and by throwing away the old world, David has thrown his lot in with the rest of Everworld. He’s a part of *their* cosmos, now. He is of Ask and Embla, gifted by Odin, Vili, and Ve, and one day Hel will accept him into her arms.

But not yet, Loki tells himself, even as something deep down inside him shudders and shakes. Freyja forgive him, not yet.

| |

David tangles his hands in Loki's hair – which is always long, always blond, always fine as silk, no matter what Loki’s face looks like. He lets the strands curl around his throat, so that every time he breathes in he smells ash and air, smoke and ozone, like the battlefield after rain. He dreams now, real dreams. He no longer returns to the Old World. He no longer remembers exactly when he falls asleep, and sometimes, the edges of waking up are hazy too. Too hazy to pinpoint. He drifts, is drifting, drifting, and it’s a strangely wonderful thing to know he will never wake up farther from the battlefield than where he left it.

| |

“I’ve heard it said only the dead have seen the end of war,” is the first thing Loki says, this morning. His eyes are darker, today, if David bothers to look. Darker, with flecks of gold.

As it is, David’s groan is barely muffled by his pillow. “Obviously they haven’t had to deal with Hel.”

“No,” Loki sighs, “I suppose they have not.” To David's reckoning, his hands are the size of dinner plates, at least, but the scratch of his fingertips over the crown of David’s head is gentle, and the rain outside makes only a quiet hiss.


End file.
